NEW DELHI (AlertNet) - Pakistan said on Thursday it is still mulling over India's offer of aid for flood-affected communities, despite a serious shortage of funds hampering Islamabad's ability to provide relief to the eight million people in need.
The disaster in Pakistan, which has killed up to 1,600 people and affected around 20 million, is one of the biggest humanitarian crises in recent years, yet international donations have been slow and scant.
India last week offered $5 million, but a Pakistani diplomat said Islamabad has not yet decided whether to accept, despite the massive scale of the flooding and its lack of resources to respond effectively.
"There are a lot of sensitivities between India and Pakistan ... but we are considering it very seriously," said Abid Saeed, press counsellor at the Pakistani High Commission in New Delhi.
"The financial needs for this disaster will not be vanishing with the passage of time. The need for the aid will remain there for a long time."
India and Pakistan have been trying to improve relations, which worsened after the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people and which New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based militants.
The two sides have since met to try and revive a four-year-old sluggish peace dialogue suspended by India after the attacks, but mistrust remains.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called his Pakistani counterpart Syed Yousef Raza Gilani on Thursday to express sorrow over the humanitarian crisis and reminded him of India's offer.
"The prime minister said that the government of India had already made an offer of assistance and was ready to do more to assist in the relief effort," said a government statement.
HUGE NEEDS
The United Nations is struggling to meet even the most basic needs of food, clean water and shelter for the millions displaced by the floods, which have inundated areas stretching from Pakistan's far north to the deep south.
A shortfall in financial donations - with the U.N appeal for $459 million only 52 percent funded - and a lack of access due to hundreds of broken bridges and washed-away roads mean only a fraction of those who need aid have received it.
There are fears of a second wave of deaths caused by water- and insect-borne diseases such as cholera, typhoid and malaria.
Aid experts say the world has been slow to respond to the Pakistan crisis, which has generated much less funding than other natural disasters affecting fewer people, such as the Indian Ocean tsunami or the earthquake in Haiti.
Divided Kashmir remains at the heart of the dispute between India and Pakistan, with both sides claiming the Himalayan region in full. They have fought two of their three wars over it.
India accuses Pakistan of fuelling the violence in Kashmir, which has killed tens of thousands, but Islamabad says it only lends moral support to what it calls Kashmir's independence movement.
DISASTER DIPLOMACY?
Humanitarian workers in Pakistan say there is no time to waste in securing funds and converting them into relief, and have criticised Islamabad for dithering over India's offer, saying aid should be not be linked to politics.
But the United Nations, which has been leading calls for more international relief for Pakistan, has been more guarded.
"We cannot comment on this because every government can decide whether to provide assistance to someone or accept assistance from someone," said Maurizio Giuliano, spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
"Solidarity across borders is a very beautiful thing. Humanitarian assistance is all about saving lives."
Analysts say Pakistan's government is thinking about how acceptance of India's aid will play out nationally, given the history between the two nuclear-armed neighbours, and there may be limited scope for disaster diplomacy between the two sides.
"Humanitarian aid is always enmeshed in politics in some way," said Ben Ramalingam, head of research and development at the Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action (ALNAP), a network of major international humanitarian agencies.
"From the perspective of the Pakistani people who are affected by the floods, it would be good to encourage the Pakistan government to accept India's offer. But the idea that politics should play no role whatsoever in humanitarian assistance may be a naive one."
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